Given that Judge Judy has been a mainstay on our television since 1996, it is incredible to believe that she is quitting her show. There’s a good likelihood that we are all aware of Judy Sheindlin’s stern demeanor, whether we’ve sat down and watched complete episodes or have only sometimes seen the show. She doesn’t put up with fools and has spoken her strong sentiments to many of the people she interacts with on television.
We are aware that Judge Judy received significant compensation for her work on the popular TV program. She will undoubtedly increase her net worth now that she has a new series, Judy Justice. However, Rebel Entertainment Partners has recently filed a $5 million lawsuit against Judge Judy, alleging that she purchased the catalog of her television program in 2015 for dirt cheap and sold it back to CBS in 2017 for a huge profit.
And because of a bizarre trick Judge Judy performed to squeeze them out of the deal by buying the rights from CBS and then selling them back to the broadcast company, the agency claims that they were cheated out of cash. But Judge Judy famous for being straight with the litigators who appear on her show said that she will only admit defeat and “eat it on national television” if the talent agency can produce a contract showing how she owes them the money.
The lawsuit comes months after Rebel settled another lawsuit with CBS over Sheindlin’s $47 million annual salary. In the complaint, Rebel claims that it is a profit participant and should earn its fair share of the money from the sale of the show’s library rights.
The courtroom show’s library rights are the focus of the most recent litigation. Judge Judy purchased the rights from CBS in 2015 only to resell them to CBS two years later for a significant profit.
“I have not seen the complaint and can therefore only comment on what I have read, which suggests that I am being sued for ‘breach of contract.’ If that is the basis of Mr. Lawrence’s lawsuit, here is my challenge: If Mr. Lawrence can produce a contract, signed by Mr. Lawrence and me on the same page, at any time in history from the beginning of time, I will toast that contract, smear it with cream cheese and eat it on national television,” Sheindlin said of Rebel president Richard Lawrence.
When CBS sold the rights to Judge Judy to Sheindlin in 2015, Rebel claims that Les Moonves, the organization’s now-disgraced former CEO, “significantly underestimated” how much the show was worth. Sheindlin hired Barron International Group to help her market the library to potential buyers for a price of about $200 million, which made CBS interested once again because she “understood she was now sitting on a gold mine.”
In order to “avoid embarrassment over his colossal mismanagement, Moonves “blundered,” as the lawsuit claims, and tried to buy back the Judge Judy library.
The lawsuit claims, “Moonves knew that he would look like an incompetent buffoon if he had to explain to the CBS Board of Directors that he had essentially sold the Judge Judy catalog for a pittance less than two years prior, but was now proposing to buy it back for tens of millions of dollars.”
Sources: AWM, PageSix, Deadline
